Mentally Retarded Enter The Mainstream Of Community Life

March 31, 1986|by HAL MARCOVITZ, The Morning Call

Fred Hoagland gets home from work about 5 p.m. every day and sits down to a dinner prepared by his wife, Beverly. At the table he may playfully chide her on not adding enough sauce to the chicken while she wonders out loud when he'll get a haircut.

After dinner the Hoaglands may relax in front of the television or the stereo in their tastefully decorated apartment.

They are a model of domestic life in Souderton, and if their both being mentally retarded ever gets in the way, it isn't obvious.

"I fix things around the house," Fred Hoagland responds, when asked what he likes to do in his spare time. And when a visitor asks him what he likes to watch on TV, he says, "I like mysteries most."

Not too far away from the Hoagland apartment is a house in Silverdale where Anna Lombardo lives. A comfortable single-family home in a Park Avenue development, Lombardo shares the unit with two other mentally retarded women.

Unlike the Hoaglands, Anna Lombardo can't work in the community, primarily because her spastic condition from cerebral palsy doesn't enable her to do some of the simplest tasks for herself.

But one gets the feeling from talking to Anna Lombardo that Anna Lombardo runs her own life.

Through a series of hand signals and use of her Bliss book - which includes pages of symbols and words she can point to as a method of communication - Anna tells a visitor that she would prefer a hamburger for lunch.

The Hoaglands and Anna Lombardo are success stories of the 1980s. They have been "mainstreamed" into what the bureaucracy calls a community living arrangement. No longer do most of the mentally retarded live in institutions such as Pennhurst Home and Hospital in Chester County. They are out on their own, living under sometimes extremely limited supervision and in many cases contributing back to society.

Community living arrangements grew out of progressive state and federal programs of the early 1970s, according to Phillip M. Fenster, administrator of the Bucks County Mental Health/Mental Retardation Commission.

While there was some movement in the early 1970s to place the mentally retarded in the community, social service agencies received a big push toward mainstreaming by the end of the decade with the federal court-ordered shutdown of Pennhurst.

There are now about 150 mentally retarded individuals sharing apartments or homes in Bucks County rather than occupying beds in institutions.

Fenster says community living arrangements have come a long way since they were first attempted.

"Individuals like to be in homes rather than institutions," says Fenster.

Like the Hoaglands, many clients of the agency can find jobs and manage quite well for themselves on their own.

"They are less dependent on the tax base and they contribute through their jobs to the tax base," Fenster says.

Neighborhoods have also learned to accept them. Fenster says that on occasion the agency will still find a residential neighborhood protesting the opening of a community living arrangement. Lately, though, Fenster says that has become the exception rather than the rule.

"The placement process has become more acceptable. Once the individuals move into the neighborhood the neighbors discover there really wasn't anything to be concerned about," he says.

Indian Creek Homes Inc., a social service agency based in Lansdale, found the apartment in Souderton for the Hoaglands. Indian Creek also provides a case worker to look in on the couple from time to time.

Peter Green, the case worker assigned to the Hoaglands, says he expects that within a few months he will no longer have to visit Fred and Beverly. They have made such good progress, he says, that Indian Creek is confident the couple can handle daily life on their own.

Fred Hoagland works as a dishwasher at a Lansdale restaurant. Public transportation provides his access to work. Beverly Hoagland was also working at an area restaurant until recently when she was laid off.

She now attends a workshop at the Bucks County Association for Retarded Citizens branch in Richland Township, but Green says he expects she will find a new job shortly.

Fred is 46 and Beverly is 34. They met when they were living in a group home in Harleysville about three years ago and were married in 1984. Their marriage certificate is framed and hangs on the wall of their apartment.

Anna Lombardo, who is 65, can operate her own electrically powered wheelchair. She prefers to lounge in an over-stuffed chair that she picked out at a local furniture store.

Her house is administered by the Community Foundation for Human Development in Sellersville. Unlike the Hoagland apartment, the Silverdale home is staffed 24 hours a day by a live-in team of counselors.

Nancy Methlie, a program manager for Community Foundation, explains that Anna has lived in the Silverdale house for five years. For nearly 57 years of her life Anna lived in institutions. Most of that time was spent in Pennhurst.

"Did you like Pennhurst?" asks a visitor.

"No," she signals.

Anna spent Easter at the home of a former counselor who likes to keep in touch with her. Methlie explains that a lot of counselors who move on to other clients like to follow up on their former charges.

"These women are special people. We love them very much," says Methlie.